We’re Voting National Socialist

“We Workers Have Awakened. We’re Voting National Socialist” July of 1932

Raising up one side’s message while exaggerating and painting others’ messages as extreme is an appeal of propaganda that has been used for political purposes across time and place. Addressing looming threats of oppressive ideologies from communists to Jewish people, this poster that comes out of Nazi Germany reads “We Workers Have Awakened. We’re Voting National Socialist”. Made by the Nazi Party in 1932, before their rise to legitimate power, this poster is what we would refer to today as a part of a “Get out the Vote” campaign, based off of the imagery, specifically targeted at industrial workers. Pictured is a strong, Aryan worker standing over 4 angry men who are shouting their own personal ideologies at the worker.

This poster fits into the Nazi trend of demonizing the enemy. By scapegoating the Jew as the puppet master who is behind communism, which was considered very differently than National Socialism, the Nazis firmly suggest to their supporters that this group is harming society (Bytwerk, Bending Spines). A Jewish man is portrayed, whispering into the ear of a communist man who is holding a poster that reads “Nazi barons! Emergency decrees. Lies and slanders. The big-wigs are living high on the hog, the people are wretched.” (Bytwerk, Propaganda Archive). The other poster that man behind the Jew is holding reads “Beat the Fascists, Civil War, and Class Struggle” (Bytwerk, Archive). In his powerful positioning over the four men, the Aryan worker who has awoken and chosen National Socialism highlights the strength of the party that the propagandist is trying to assert.

At this time during the Weimar Republic, a political party’s positioning on the electoral ballot depended on its strength in the nation and level of support (Bytwerk, Propaganda Archive, and Bending Spines). This is why the party itself is the group that produced and uplifted themselves in this piece. As the Nazi’s won 18.3% of the vote and became the second most powerful party in the Reichstag, they had to clinch a majority of the vote to gain full control in the next election in 1932 (Evans). As a part of a campaign to clinch the majority and gain societal support the Nazi Party, they appealed to the very large working class, beckoning this group to ‘wake up’ and support them. The imagery of the large stone swastika in the background also highlights the power that the Nazis are trying to convey to the German nation and very specifically the working class. Just as the factories are powerful and have the capacity to produce, so does the party, therefore, by supporting the party, this poster suggests that the worker also supports themselves and their own work.

Sources:

Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power 1933–1939. (London: Penguin Books, 2005).

Bytwerk, Randall L. Bending Spines: The Propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic(East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004), 40-52.